Toilet rolls and duct tape
Here we have, set up beside the breastfeeding chair, places for my mobile, a muesli bar, pens, two types of medication, the camera, lollies, and my diary. Genius.
They used to all just sit on the chair, but Ana (who paused to absent-mindedly lick Louisette’s head as she walked over the chair arm yesterday) likes to bolt down the hall and leap onto the chair, skidding across it with a startled look and scattering everything on it. (The milk you see here is safe because it’s nestled behind a tissue box weighed down with two novels – one for CJ and one for me – this is also one of the “put the baby to sleep” chairs.)
Definitive Failure
This week’s baby weigh-in was statistically the point at which it became absolutely certain that Louisette won’t be on breast milk alone by the time we go to China. It also turned out that my breast milk production hasn’t actually increased in six weeks.
Six weeks.
Six weeks of constant medication and time-stress (trying desperately to fit seven feeds and five pumps into a day with one-hour breaks between each one) and physical pain.
I’m pretty sure there was a slight increase for a while, but the instant I took care of my own weight (dieting* and going off domperidone) there was a drop of about a quarter in my supply.
So here are my choices:
Extreme Number 1
Switch to exclusive formula feeds.
Benefits to me: No more pain, anyone can feed her (I could sleep ten hours in a row if I wanted), no public embarrassment ever.
Benefits to Louisette: She will definitely get enough food, at last (it’s difficult to measure breast milk supply).
Disadvantages: Breast milk is better for Louisette’s health and for my budget.
Extreme Number 2
Go back on domperidone, continue pumping five times a day and feeding 7 times a day (or 8, if I wake up Louisette at 4am and thus make sure both of us are murderous the following day), eat much more food and chocolate.
Benefits to me: Lots of chocolate, yay!
Benefits to Louisette: Possibility of exclusive breastfeeding in a few months.
Disadvantages: 5-10 kilo weight gain for me (necessitating a new wardrobe and a resizing of my wedding ring, plus various health and self-esteem issues), inability to do anything outside of the house other than walk short distances with Louisette. Quitting one or more of my tutoring jobs (I have three precious hours per week, each on a separate day – two are at home so could theoretically still continue). Extremely miserable and probably painfully awkward/humiliating travel experience (because I’d probably have to breastfeed in public places, where I’d already be the centre of attention due to being a Westerner with a baby – and people wouldn’t hesitate to openly stare) – I’d need to stay home alone as much as possible, since stress decreases milk supply. Extremely rigid feeding schedule for Louisette, and likely hunger and tiredness due to constant attempts to reduce the amount of formula.
What I’ll actually do
Suspend attempts to increase my milk supply until after we get back from China (and are recovered) – no domperidone, and no pumping unless I feel like it. Feed Louisette on demand (ish) six times a day instead of seven (seven a day necessitates feeds closer together than three hours, and has I think been interrupting her need for sleep, thus causing feeding problems due to her tiredness), and supplement every feed with formula (I’ve been supplementing every second feed, and supplementing the in between feeds with expressed breast milk) – which means her feeds will be more consistent. Continue dieting (before the weather turns cold and it gets even harder – I am not a happy dieter).
In China: Leave the pump at home, but finish off my week’s supply of domperidone while we’re there, and ease off on the diet (my motto will be “Try not to binge”). Always have formula ready to go when I leave the house – enough for a full formula-only feed if I’m not comfortable breastfeeding at the time (an extremely likely scenario). Feed Louisette six times a day on demand (ish).
When we come back, see where things stand (with her weight and with mine). It’s very likely my milk will have diminished further, and that’s fine. We’ll give her more formula, and if she ends up on just formula it’s not the worst thing in the world.
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Don’t bother trying to comfort me over the word “failure” in the title. It’s no reflection on me, and I know that. I’m so glad to have a definitive failure so I can take action instead of working so hard for an uncertain outcome.
And yes, I know a lot of women never lose their pregnancy weight (or their “I haven’t slept properly in eighteen months” weight after having the child) but to me, having a healthy weight is worth fighting for – for me and for Louisette (and presumably CJ benefits too, although he’s never once given me even a hint that my weight bothers him in the slightest). I can’t expect my children to grow up into adults of a healthy weight if I don’t model what that looks like (and eats like). Plus when I feel fat I eat more, so that doesn’t help things – if I gave up, I’d just keep getting bigger until I didn’t fit through doorways.
Given a choice between a definite and major improvement in my health or a possibly-maybe improvement in Louisette’s health, I choose me. Also, the stress of pumping, scheduling etc probably didn’t help, since stress or embarrassment reduces milk supply too.
I began doing on demand (ish) feedings yesterday. After a four-hour sleep (instead of the hour and a half she’d have had on the previous system), Louisette woke up looking like this:
During that four hours I put away the dishes, did washing and hung it out, washed and sterilised bottles, ate lunch, wrote this blog entry, and did a bunch of sewing including my first successful zipper (the steampunk dress is now one piece, and technically wearable although lacking a proper hem and two modesty panels).
She still slept six hours last night (after many more happy periods than usual), so I definitely made the right call.
I lost three kilos this week, which is a record – clearly domperidone interrupted my body’s normal post-pregnancy weight loss. This photo was taken this morning, and you can clearly see that my top is riding up over my pregnant-style belly (still). Hopefully in a month or two that won’t be such a constant issue.
Next week there’ll be another month of daily pictures.
*This is my version of a full-on diet:
Breakfast: Special K or Nut Feast cereal with full cream milk.
Morning tea: Fruit
Lunch: Ham, avocado and beetroot sandwich.
Afternoon tea: Milo.
Dinner: Anything from (frozen supermarket) fish and (baked) chips to lasagna.
Supper: Fruit.
Suit Up
CJ will be acting as best man to his brother very shortly, and this is the suit he’ll be wearing – the first proper suit he’s bought since his Year Twelve formal.
For reasons that are patently obvious, I have encouraged him to wear it around the house. A lot.
Superpower
At the time of writing (last Saturday), I am the only person in the world who can make Louisette smile on cue (most of these photos were taken on the way in or out of a smile – it’s hard to catch the exact moment, but you get the idea).
Since then, CJ has discovered he has the ability too. Awesome x 2.
Leaving the House
Even at seven weeks of age, Louisette finds Mummy pretty boring after a while (heck, so do I). But if we have at least one outing every day (or, in a pinch, a visitor), she sleeps better. And I am a more interesting conversationalist for having done something other than housework and exercising my breasts a dozen times a day (which is still happening, and is the focus of every waking hour – right now it’s twenty minutes until the next feed).
As you’ll have noticed from yesterday’s blog entry (and I bet the parents noticed it immediately), CJ and I took Louisette to a Beethoven performance last Friday night. Breastfeeding in public is difficult enough for me, for Louisette, and for the public – but using a pump in public is far beyond that. So it was a good thing that the performance was due to start at 6pm – right on feeding time. Louisette generally feeds for 30-40 minutes (not counting up to ten minutes on the bottle) in absolute silence, and sometimes falls asleep immediately afterwards. She knows the difference between music and noise, and was unlikely to be enraged by the performance itself. Plus, the performance was free and in a public place (an acoustically terrible place, where no musical purist would bother attending). I’d practised modest breastfeeding at playgroup and my mum’s house, and both times were fine. All the fates aligned. . . and then failed.
Louisette refused to feed – something she’s honestly never done before. She was audibly grizzly, and refused the dummy (which has carried her on silent wings through grocery shopping and church services almost flawlessly). Rocking her didn’t help, and nor did wrapping her. She wasn’t hot or cold. And then she cried for real, and after another abortive attempt at feeding, CJ took her and fled.
To be fair, she didn’t make another sound for the rest of the performance. But Beethoven doesn’t mix well with sudden crying. A woman in the row in front of us turned around in her seat and glared at me pointedly for a prolonged period of time, while I carefully and desperately pretended intense focus on the performance. There were so many responses I wanted to make: To cry, to apologise, to glare back, to explain that the plan I’d made was as perfect as it gets, to point out that we were in a public foyer so if she wanted silence she should have paid for it, to tell her she was the kind of person that makes women stay locked in their homes until they get so depressed they want to kill themselves, to ask her snarkily if she’d ever had a cough while at a performance – and if so, did anyone glare at her?
But mostly I just felt like a bad, rude person.
I’m not sure how women with colicky babies survive. Do they just stay home until the kid is six months old – or more? Or do they endure the hate wherever they go?
Yes, sure, classical music is usually a place where people are more quiet than usual. I certainly wouldn’t take Louisette to a concert hall performance. But this particular outing had everything going for it – and it still failed. It happens. I just wish I didn’t feel so awful about it.
Today (I’m writing on a Tuesday) I went to playgroup for the second time. It’s brilliant stuff. I can be late, or leave early, or both – no-one is waiting for me, or needs me to do anything specific. I can breastfeed unselfconsciously, because everyone’s used to it and doesn’t care if there’s a little accidental flashing. Best of all, if Louisette happens to cry a little no-one cares – no-one even notices among the laughing and talking and playing of the other kids.There’s a whole crowd of kids under school age, and a lot of mums with a few dads mixed in.
This playgroup is a very very good one, run by my church (although about half the people don’t go to my church, and there are new people arriving all the time). There are a lot of great toys, a free morning tea, music time, and story time. The women are kind and supportive (not the “Is your kid walking yet? Mine is” competitive kind you sometimes get), and pleasantly international (I can talk in Indonesian or Chinese if I want practice, which is awesome). If you’re a parent and you live in Canberra, email me at fellissimo at hotmail dot com and I’ll give you all the details. I for one will be there every week.
I will absolutely keep taking Louisette to public events (after careful planning and thought – eg we don’t take her to movies), but it’s going to be a long time before I can be calm when she cries at the wrong moment. And I can guarantee there’ll always be one or two haters ready to lynch me for daring to leave the house with her. That will probably always hurt and terrify me.
And then there are the others: the ones who walk up to me in a mall to say how beautiful she is. And there are a lot more of them than the other kind. Can you blame them?
PS Although Louisette’s still underweight in relation to her birth weight, she seems to be doing well, so I’ve reduced her formula to four supplementary bottles of 50mL each per day. Wish us luck. . .
Speaking of luck: Last night she slept seven hours! Much squee! She’s slept six hours at a time so often it could be construed as normal for her. This is VERY good.
I haven’t lost any weight at all since week two, and I really haven’t been eating badly for the last couple of weeks. I just looked up the side effects of the domperidone I’ve been taking (which is meant to help with increasing milk production) and sure enough, weight gain is one of the side effects (that, and ravenous hunger – so eating when I’m hungry is not going to work). I will finish the pills I currently have and then stop (continueing to carefully monitor my milk production and Louisette’s weight), because looking three/four months pregnant and being ten kilos above my normal not-quite-in-the-healthy-weight-range-but-nearly weight is just too depressing. I’ve had a very similar experience when taking zoloft. It’d be nice to wear non-maternity clothes, and my wedding ring (yes, if you gain enough weight you do get significantly fatter fingers).
Enlighten Festival
Each year, Canberra has an Enlighten festival, with heaps of mostly free events including Ping Pong with paint, and a silent disco (dancers wear headphones. . . I heartily enjoyed watching them – holding a baby is an awesome excuse for being a wallflower).
On Friday night, CJ and Louisette and I went and saw some free Beethoven at the National Library, as part of the “Handwritten” exhibit currently happening there – including Beethoven’s own notes on some of the pieces played. How awesome is that?
After hearing and seeing some Beethoven, we walked outside to enjoy day one of the annual light sculptures (projected onto major buildings in central Canberra, and inspired by their contents) —
Then we wandered over to Questacon (that is, over the road) to see some more.
The festival (including light sculptures at the library, Questacon, Portrait Gallery, National Gallery, and Old Parliament House – all within walking distance) continues this weekend from 8pm Friday and Saturday night.
Pick your flaws
Having a child is a strange thing. I know I’ll be a huge, huge influence on her (and CJ will be too). Some of her future is mine to choose, some of it is mine to accidentally give her (and cringe when I see, later, what effect my actions have had on her). Some of who she is in the future will come seemingly out of nowhere.
But I can try and give her a good life and a good heart, so despite all the awryness of plans that will happen, I do spend time thinking about how to raise Louisette and who I’d like her to be. The other day, I thought, “If I could pick her faults, what would I choose?”
My first thought was that it’d be nice if she was overconfident – filled with unstoppable optimism.
But then I realised that could cost her the ability to grow up and function – if she was too far from rational, too blissed out to bother ever putting effort into anything. Or if it related to her physical limits (or ability to drive) it could get her killed.
So I thought, “How about vanity? What if she walked around utterly sure of herself, her looks, her worth?” But I know that would cause people to dislike her. A certain class of person would be determined to bring her down to earth, and would try to cause her to fail at whatever she tried to do.
But if she was insecure – if that was her flaw – they wouldn’t. No-one would hate or hurt her.
My thoughts crunched gears there, as I wondered if I’d just wished my little girl was insecure – because people hate a woman who’s too sure of herself, but they’ll accept one who’s not sure enough.
Later on, I thought, “What if she was an overconfident boy?”
I bet she’d do just fine.
On the up side, this is one little girl who will always know there’s one man who loves her unconditionally. That’s worth plenty.
Steampunk Dress: Outside Top
It’s not done, as such – but if I wanted, I could wear it as is. You can’t tell, but the buttons are steampunky, I swear.
I’ll be taking it in (but not until the rest of the dress is made, since it’s made to be worn over the top), and changing the neckline so the silhouette is symmetrical.
“The Hunchback Assignments” by Arthur Slade
The Steampunk Scholar recommended YA steampunk writer Arthur Slade, and his taste turned out to be just as good as I’d guessed.
“The Hunchback Assignments” is the story of two orphans – the stunningly beautiful Octavia and the stunningly ugly Modo. Both were rescued (or is it captured?) by the mysterious and powerful Mr Socrates.
The rest of this review is now at Comfy Chair, where I get paid for it.
That’s not a poo-splosion, THIS is a poo-splosion!
I rarely use exclamation marks. This one is, believe me, deserved. Time for a daily awesomeness that uses the OTHER meaning of “awesome”.
Alternate title: The Bum-Gun.
Picture the scene: It’s 5:00am and all is quiet except for a stirring infant and her mother; a woman light-headed and blurry from lack of sleep. It’s time for a feed and – judging by the smell – a nappy change.
The mother cuddles the infant and places her on the change table. She skillfully scoops up a very full load of nappy without letting it spill and stain the baby’s clothes or wrap. She drops it in the nappy bin and reaches for the wipes with a smirk of self-congratulation.
That’s when it happens.
Pow! Blam! Squirt!
A stream of liquid poo shoots up (yes, up) and out (yes, out) at a 45 degree angle (yes, a 45 degree angle) hitting the mother’s hair and spraying across the carpet and furniture.
The mother emits an inarticulate noise of shock and awe. She freezes, thinking, “Did that just happen?”
It did. Oh yes, it did. There is no mistaking the angle of attack: The evidence lies, warm and pungent, half a metre above the scene of the crime. In my hair. So much for gravity.
Five centimetres to the left, and I’d have copped it in the mouth.
Is this the face that conceals a startling secret weapon?
It is. Oh yes, it is.
Felicity Banks 